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opulent drapery. She is dressed in a stately, long black dress and Solomon R. Guggenheim in
fur mantle with a plumed headpiece that echoes the coat of arms in 1928, the two became friends
the background. and collaborators. Rebay
Like Isabella Stewart Gardner, convinced Guggenheim to begin
Katherine Sophie Dreier was both a collecting abstract art. As his
collector and a patron. Together with advisor, she connected him
Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, to artists in Europe and even-
Dreier established the Société tually helped him acquire the
Anonyme in New York City. She later more than 700 works that would
added the subtitle “Museum of form the basis of his museum.
Modern Art: 1920” to commemorate In 1939, he named Rebay the
the year it was founded. With first director of the new Museum
Duchamp’s assistance, Dreier became of Non-Objective Painting
the driving force behind this first (today the Solomon R.
“experimental museum” of contem- Guggenheim Museum).
porary art in America. Throughout Rebay curated the museum’s
the 1920s and 1930s, she organized American and European exhibi-
and funded an extensive schedule of tions and wrote about and
programs, exhibitions, and publica- lectured on abstract art. In 1943,
tions that featured over seventy Hilla Rebay with one of her collages, Guggenheim and Rebay com-
Photograph of Katherine Dreier, American and international artists. In ca. 1928. missioned architect Frank Lloyd
circa 1910. Dorothea A. Dreier 1941, Dreier and Duchamp promised Photo: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Wright to build the innovative,
papers, 1881-1941. the Société Anonyme’s collection of spiraling museum building that
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. more than 1,000 modernist works to opened in 1959. She established the Hilla von Rebay Foundation in
the Yale University Art Gallery in 1967 to “foster, promote, and encourage the interest of the public in
New Haven. Although Dreier was not successful in establishing an non-objective art.” Rebay’s art collection and archive became part of
independent museum, the Société Anonyme served in part as a model the Guggenheim Museum after her death that same year. A 2005
for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. retrospective exhibition of Rebay’s artwork highlighted her pivotal role
Around the 1930s, women patrons actively launched some of New in founding the Guggenheim Museum.
York’s leading museums: the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Solomon R. Guggenheim’s niece Peggy (Marguerite) Guggenheim
Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. shared his passion for abstract art, including Cubism and Surrealism.
In 1929, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller invited her friends Lillie Plummer The gallerist, collector, and patron opened the Art of This Century
Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan to join her in founding the Museum of Gallery in New York in 1942. A combined museum and commercial
Modern Art (MoMA), as a way to support contemporary artists. The gallery, Art of This Century exhibited
three women selected A. Conger Goodyear as president of the board of European and American artists, and
trustees, and Alfred H. Barr, Jr. as the museum’s director. MoMA gave Robert Motherwell, Jackson
established a canonical modern art collection, which it augmented with Pollock, and Mark Rothko their first
a program of avant-garde exhibitions from America and abroad. As the solo shows. During World War II,
museum grew, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller continued to play a pivotal Guggenheim went even further in her
role. In addition to donating over 2,000 works and providing role as patron and assisted many
acquisition funds, she acted as treasurer and trustee. Furthermore, she artists in their escape from Nazi-
collected nineteenth-century folk art, which she gave to Colonial controlled areas of Europe to America.
Williamsburg in 1939 and was transferred to the newly built Abby By 1947, Guggenheim decided to
Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in 1957. close her New York gallery and move
When the Metropolitan Museum of Art turned down sculptor and back to Europe. She had spent many
patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s offer to donate her collection of years on the continent becoming
modern American art, she took matters into her own hands. In 1930, acquainted with the work of
she founded the Whitney Museum of American Art, contributing avant-garde artists. In 1925, she
about 700 works to its core collection. Under its first director Juliana commissioned Man Ray to photo-
Force, the museum became an influential center for American art. graph her in a costume consisting of
Indeed, the founder had wanted her an elegant cloth-of-gold evening dress
museum to be “devoted both to by Paul Poiret and a headdress by
assembling the best of American art Vera Stravinsky. Another photograph
past and present and to fostering from that session appeared in an Peggy Guggenheim, by Man Ray,
the work of living artists, particular- article about influential foreigners 1925, gelatin silver print, National
Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
ly those working in avant-garde residing in Paris in the Swedish weekly Institution, Washington, D.C.
styles.” Gertrude Vanderbilt Bonniers Vickotidnig.
©2000 Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society, NY/
Whitney’s long-term commitment In 1948, Peggy Guggenheim was ADAGP, Paris
to living artists is exemplified by invited to display her modern art
this 1968 bronze cast after the 1916 collection in its own pavilion at the Venice Biennale. She seized the
original portrait bust, which she opportunity to show the American Abstract Expressionists, who had
commissioned from the struggling never been publicly exhibited in Europe. In 1949, she moved to
young artist Jo Davidson. Venice, where she purchased an eighteenth-century palace on the
A portrait commission led to the Grand Canal called the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. In forming her
founding of another major New collection of avant-garde art, Guggenheim had consulted with the artist
York City museum. The artist and Marcel Duchamp and the art historian Herbert Read. In 1951, she
collector Baroness Hilla Rebay von opened the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni to the public. For her important
Ehrenwiesen, who was from an cultural contributions, she was nominated as an Honorary Citizen of
aristocratic family in Alsace, then Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Venice in 1962. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection opened in 1980
part of Germany, had immigrated by Jo Davidson, 1968 cast after under the management of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation,
to the United States in 1927. When 1916 original, bronze sculpture, to which she had bequeathed her art collection and palazzo, stipulating
she painted the businessman National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, that the artworks remain in the Venetian residence.
Washington, D.C.
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